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Supported Video Chipsets
Windows Vista As of February 2007, there are still significant problems with NVIDIA drivers for Windows Vista and Galactic Civilizations II. Users of NVIDIA GeForce-based chipsets should download the latest updated drivers as they become available. Supported Video Chipsets While the game officially requires a DirectX9-compatible video chipset, it can be unclear to non-technical users just what that means. The game uses many special graphical features that were added in DirectX9. Because of this, the game will look its best on chipsets designed with that standard in mind. It should still run on chipsets that are only designed for DirectX8 or DirectX7, but users may encounter some graphical issues. For this reason a DirectX9 compatible video chipset is highly recommended in order to have the best game experience. Note that DX9 support may not necessarily correlate with performance (i.e., a high-end card with lesser DirectX support may run the game faster than a low-end card with better DirectX support). It only covers cards which support the needed graphical features, regardless of speed. It is very important that regardless what chipset your computer has, you update your video drivers with the latest ones available. Galactic Civlizations 2 generally requires video drivers newer than mid-2005 to run properly (or at all, in some cases). DirectX 10 Chipsets * nVidia GeForce 8000, 9000, and 200 Series * ATI Radeon HD 2000, 3000, and 4000 Series * Intel GMA HD DirectX 9 Chipsets * ATI Radeon 9500-9800 * ATI Radeon Xpress IGP Series * ATI Radeon X Series * ATI Radeon X1 Series * ATI FireGL Series * nVidia GeForce FX 5000 Series * nVidia GeForce 6000 Series * nVidia GeForce 7000 Series * nVidia Quadro FX Series * S3 Chrome Series * Intel GMA 900, 915, 950, and 3000 DirectX 8 Chipsets DirectX 8 chipsets, while technically below the game's minimum requirements, can generally run the game without any obvious graphical issues, though performance may be sub-par. * ATI Radeon 8500-9250 * nVidia GeForce 3 Series * nVidia GeForce 4 Ti Series * nVidia Quadro 4 Series * Matrox Parhelia Series * Matrox Millennium 550-750 Series * Intel Extreme Graphics (800 Series)* * Note: Intel 82815 and 82810E chipsets will not properly run the game, as they only implement DirectX 6 in hardware. DirectX 7 Chipsets DirectX 7 chipsets may run the game when updated with the latest drivers from the manufacturer's website, but users of these will experience graphical issues such as flat-shaded ships and no shadows on planets. Disabling point-sprites in the game's options menu can help improve performance on these cards. ''Note: The workaround in reply #2 of this thread is reported to allow textures on ships with some of these cards. This workaround is not officially supported, so use it at your own risk.'' * ATI Radeon 64 * ATI Radeon 7000 Series * ATI Radeon 200-340 M IGP * nVidia GeForce 256 Series * nVidia GeForce 2 Series * nVidia GeForce 4 MX Series Older Chipsets Older chipsets designed for DirectX 6 and below are completely unsupported, as they lack Hardware T&L. Even if one is able to forcibly make the game run through emulation or other techniques, performance and appearance are likely to be so poor as to make doing so a complete waste of time. Some examples of these older chipsets include: * nVidia Riva, TNT, and TNT2 Series * ATI Rage and Fury Series * 3Dfx VooDoo (All Series) * S3 Savage Series * Matrox G400 Series Under Mac OS X Using Parallels 3.0 or greater (a virtual machine, not an emulator) on an Intel Mac, Galactic Civilizations II will run with only minor sacrifices to quality, and at native speeds, depending upon the power of the computer hosting the Windows operating system. Parallels will pass the video card through to DirectX9, meaning that to the game, nothing looks out of the ordinary. Older versions of Parallels will most likely not work, as they lacked the ability to allow the host operating system access to the video card. EXPERIMENTAL by now everyone knows laptops have been smaller, these laptops are called netbooks. now, i'm adding my working details into this wikia for prefs, please click (not ready yet. come back in a hour) intel 3150 graphics media accelelator. Category:Support